ROADBURN FESTIVAL

15 – 18 April 2010

013 and Midi Theatre

Tillburn Holland

The Roadburn festival has gained a real monumental status amongst metal and rock fans around the planet. The festival has become such an ultimate popular event during the past few years that tickets for the festival have been sold out within less than one hour. What makes the Roadburn festival such popular ? Well firstly bands of course, as the festival offers such a diverse line-upl covering a wide range of music from the underground psychedelic and rock, avant-garde stuff, doom or any other variation of metal stuff pleasing the fans of the music and above all the general atmosphere. Metal-Rules got an excellent privilege of visiting the Roadburn festival for the second time in a row to see a plenty of killer bands, smell the taste of the weed and enjoy Triptykon. However as it is widely know the volcanic outburst in Iceland caused nothing but a tremendous headache for the organization of the Roadburn festival. As all the flights were canceled and airports were closed cos ashes of clouds were rolling over Europe resulting several bands were unable to arrive at the Roadburn festival. For example the Swedish doom legends Candlemass was forced to cancel, and Jesu, Evoken and so on. The Norwegians had troubles in getting at Roadburn, but however made it. As several bands didn’t have any other choices, but cancels the appearance that resulted the whole schedule had to be remade and re-arranged. Despite big cancellations, there were after all tons of magic and unique bands on the stage and magic music.

THURSDAY

The Roadburn festival started out when Kylesa from Savannah kicked the set off. With the two drummers, the band delivered a good set of raw sludge stuff. The female vocalist Laura Pleasants’ raw vocals fitted perfectly to Kylesa’s style. The groove and heavy songs rolled over the main venue and caught everyone’s interest. The audience definitely enjoyed the set offered by Kylesa.

It was about time to switch to another venue. The Midi Theatre was an entire new place added to Roadburn. The whole place looked absolutely great reminding of some amphitheatre. An excellent place for bands to burst out the metal, rock and etc. All right back to the bands.

This is the Norwegian "Shining", not the Swedish one. Despite the same name, these bands have nothing in common at all. The Norwegian version of Shining presents more fusion chaotic jazz terrorizing metal stuff. Even though the band has been more or less unknown to the writer of the article, but their mind-blowing and energetic set was something that none of metal band could reach the same intensive on the stage. Crazy stuff… Listening to them needs to have a real open minded approach as this kind of intensive driving jazz fusion chaos could be too brutal in some way

The masters of sludge metal made a triumphant comeback at Roadburn. The band’s energy and brutal set encouraged a few maniacs to stage dive off from the stage and even some kind of small pit started out nearby the stage. Eyehategod sounded vital, raw and brutal. The frontman Michael Williams literally screamed his lungs out of his body. Even though the band has been on the hiatus for some time, but the band hadn’t lost any inch of their sludge brutal approach. That kind of powerful rage from the beginning to end is an utter pleasure to follow and watch for sure.

Enslaved’s gig at Roadburn was in jeopardy, but however they managed to make it. Enslaved have presented the Norwegian pagan blackened metal without loosing the grip. For some reason or another the band hasn’t managed to rise to the main legions of the black metal. However, Enslaved have walked a path of their own. The band’s gig at Roadburn presented a grim sounding troll black influenced metal assault. The core of the band Grutle Kjellson and Ivar Bjørnson has remained the same since the beginning and that showed both the guys played an utter strong role in the band. Well guitarist Ice Dale aka Arve Isdal looked like he would have visited a gym. However Enslaved’s set consisted of the material from the latest opus and from their demo days. Later a couple of guys of Enslaved were seen in the ranks of Trinarcia as invented by Mr Warrior.

The reunited Goatsnake was next. It was quite amazing that Goatsnake still got on the stage as a band. The band’s guitarist has been more active with other bands and projects like Sunn O))). However, the return of Goatsnake was welcomed with an enthusiastic reaction amongst the audience. The vocalist Pete Stahl with the heavy leather jacket sounded great indeed. Goatsnake absolutely delivered a great cross section of their material from the past up till the last Goatsnake studio effort. The stoner maniacs definitely got a great pleasure of seeing Goatsnake after a long time.

By the way, Roadburn struggled with the schedule problems and to find replacements in the very last minute, therefore it was quite odd that Sunn O))) didn’t get on the stage to spread the real sonic tormenting pleasure. Kind weird so to say….